MegaUpload Closure Hurt Box Office Revenue

The fact piracy is not all negative and that pirated content can actually end up making more money for its owners is not contested by anyone outside of the big media companies.

But studies showing the benefits of piracy, or the damages for that matter, are few and far between.

One interesting recent study showed that fighting piracy doesn't necessarily result in the effects you'd expect, or that Hollywood expects.

The study found that box office revenue went down after the closure of MegaUpload. Looking at weekly attendance data for 1,344 movies in 49 countries, the study is broad.

No matter how the researchers looked at the data, they found a link, based on internet penetration in the country, MegaUpload's popularity there and so on.

It's true that the effects were seen only for medium or small sized movies, for blockbusters it was the opposite, movie attendance went up. So maybe Hollywood got even more than it bargained for, not only are its movies more seen, movies made by smaller studios are suffering.